Better Jewish Ways to Enter Committed Relationships in Marriage
 
The Project for Conscious Jewish Marriage

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Discussing alternatives to kinyan and kiddshin:

 

On this site-- Conscious Jewish Marriage: Two Options-- you can see two proposed rituals to establish Jewish marriage, based on precedents in rabbinic law, halakha, in areas other than marital law.

 

One, Brit Ahuvim, Lovers’ Covenant, is the method Rabbi Rachel Adler proposes. She spells out her reasoning there fully and clearly, grounded in rabbinic method but accessible to all.

 

Another, Shvu’at Zuggiyut, is the proposal of Dr. Tzemah Yoreh and his spouse, Rabbi Aviva Richman. It, similarly, is detailed in the reasoning behind its approach but accessible to “regular” people—Jewish consumers.

 

Brit Ahuvim adapts halakhic business partnership law to the establishment of a marriage partnership, written in beautiful literary, poetic, language.

 

Unlike rabbinic marriage law, which is wholly androcentric-- focused on men as subjects and women as objects of male action; and patriarchal-- enshrining the power of men over women; rabbinic partnership law assumes both parties to the partnership to be men, with both (therefore) to receive protection, so that the partnership is established on a solid and fair basis for both. 

 

The rabbis, of course, were themselves partners in business relationships and partnerships, so yes, there was self-interest here as there could not be and was not in rabbinic marriage law, written by men for men, about women. 

 

None of the rabbis were subject to the degradation of being commodified in the act of marriage, their sexuality traded between the  guardian with authority over their sexuality and reproductivity (in this fantasy, that would be their mothers), and a wife who acquired exclusive and non-reciprocal rights to that, including the right to withhold ending the relationship or holding the men's marital freedom ransom to extortive demands.

 

Tzemah Yoreh’s proposed ritual uses the ancient Jewish practice, originating in the Bible, of sacred oath which, in traditional Jewish practice, is more powerfully binding than written commitments-- like prenups. 

 

It also comes with the pre-existing modality of annulling the oath, in this case, the couple’s marriage commitment: divorce.

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Both methods obviate the need for a get and get withholding or refusal, or  the involvement of a rabbinic court to end the marriage relationship.

 

There have been other proposed alternatives to kinyan and kiddushin and more can be proposed.

 

I focus on these two proposals because they both address and reject, head on, any version of kinyan and kiddushin; 

because their authors explain their reasoning clearly and fully, in accessible language; and because one offers a wholly new ritual (Brit Ahuvim), while the other, adapts ancient practice to making and annulling sacred oath commitments to marriage. 

 

All this comes to the big point: conscious Jewish marriage.

 

Grappling with these (or other) proposals should be the occasion for a couple to deeply consider what they are undertaking in their marriage commitment to one another.

 

In this context, we return to the question of prenups, altogether, addressed in several other sections on this site, where we warned against misleading claims about the effectiveness of halakhic prenups in preventing iggun or women’s victimization in get withholding or extortion. 

 

As stated there, prenups are not only nothing new in Jewish practice; they were ubiquitous across the Jewish world, in all communities and customs, until quite recently: extensive, detailed, prenups were standard Jewish practice, not something women had to ask for specially in order to try to protect themselves from disabilities in rabbinic marriage and divorce.

 

Why was that the case?

 

Because pre-modern marriage was understood, self-evidently, to be a vital economic partnership between both parties to the marriage and their families. A serious business (literally), with both sides having interests and needs to protect.

 

Pre-modern Jewish marriage could also be other things—a partnership of people who became friends and shared love. 

 

Read the memoirs of Glikl Hamel, or Pauline Wengeroff. For all that their marriages were arranged, Glikl when she was a young teenager, Wengeroff, when she was a slightly older teenager, they loved their husbands fervently. And were loved in return.

 

The point is that being clear eyed and up front about financial and other practicalities, which was the case in pre-modern Jewish prenups, does not preclude emotional connection, love, passion. 

 

On the contrary. It can be the best guarantor that emotional connection is not undone by practicalities of which one or both parties to the marriage is ignorant or naive.

 

Such clarity up front is the best way to head off disagreements during the marriage that can lead to strife and even divorce. 

 

While no prenup is a guarantee, it is certainly better to discuss and lay out practical realities than to leave these unspoken, unknown.

 

Moreover, currently, the onus is overwhelmingly on women to ask for a prenup as a special need, given women's vulnerabilities and disabilities under rabbinic marriage and divorce law.

 

This unfairly makes it appear as if the bride is distrustful, not fully committed.

This, too, is part of marital abuse of women. 

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Making comprehensive prenuptial agreements-- such as were practiced across the Jewish world for most of Jewish history-- the norm once again, is "best practice" for all concerned, and removes the unfair burden of one-sidedness about this from women.

 

About get abuse, specifically, the halakhic prenup of the Center for Women’s Justice is the best out there in offering a time-determined, automatic route to ending a dead marriage without the involvement of a rabbinic court.

 

But there are other good, healthy, uses for the other kind of prenup. 

 

Practiced universally, as the Jewish norm, prenups take the unjust onus off women to get  protection—and simultaneously serves the new husband, as well, by taking coercion and control out of the marital picture and leaving no secrets to be discovered at some later stage and experienced as deception or betrayal.

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If prenup discussions founder—if the prospective husband won’t forego the right to withhold a get and have the marriage automatically annul in the circumstances the Center for Women’s Justice’s prenup specifies—or if either partner is not forthcoming about assets, debts, health, history—that, too, is a critically important discussion for the prospective partners to have before marriage.

 

All this means borrowing from the Jewish past consciously

 

in order to build for a better and just Jewish future in

 

marriage and divorce.

 

It is to take the history of abuse and turn it to the good.